Gobbled by the Blob

How does one begin to make sense out of the gooey, smelly mess that is today’s Republican Party?

My question must be accompanied by a confession. I recently joined the GOP for the very purpose of screwing it up. I wanted to cause even more chaos within it, or at least my own local corner of it. But my purpose was not to do it harm, but to do it good. I hoped that the chaos to which I contributed would be creative, not destructive.

I keep being told, you see, that to “make a difference,” I must belong to a “major” political party. The term “make a difference” makes me grit my teeth; I’m sure Stephen Cox has exposed it to justifiable ridicule in at least one of his “Word Watch” essays. The term “major” political party will make a great many of our readers grit their teeth, too. But my friends’ incessant arguments that I could be more politically effective as a Republican than as a Libertarian — at this crucial hour, when statism threatens to gobble up this country like the Blob — pushed me over the edge. In one of those deeply desperate moments when craziness seemed like sanity, I switched parties.

Here, however, I must make another confession. Though I do know a lot of very nice Republicans, there are quite a number of others I simply cannot stand. I’d hoped to remain in the GOP at least long enough to vote in its primary later this year. Already I’m not sure that I can last that long.

I was a Democrat from the time I first registered to vote, at the age of 18, until only a couple of years ago. During the eight years when Bush II practically demolished liberty in this country, I found myself moving increasingly in a libertarian direction. I’d hoped Obama would be the anti-Bush, but when he turned into George’s little brother, that was simply too much for me. The cowering, groveling, toadying attitude of so many Democrats to Emperor O just proved unbearable. I couldn’t keep that clothespin on my nose any longer.

Statists both left and right jabber about power, power, power. They are savages, and that is all they understand.

As a capital-L Libertarian, I got a brief chance to breathe again. But now that my mania to “make a difference” in the GOP has been quelled by reality, I find the clothespin pinching me once more. The vast majority of Republicans were very willing subjects to George Junior. As soon as another of their warlords seizes the scepter, they will surely revert to their former serfdom. I’m particularly disgusted by their babble about “libertarianism.” They show no evidence of knowing even the meaning of the word.

Like other politically active people, they love power as a junkie loves heroin. The Tea Party, which started out as a libertarian enterprise, captured the popular imagination and began to exert an influence. Then the social conservatives got hold of it — seeing it as a vehicle to power — and now the movement divides its energies between combatting the leviathan state and attempting to harness it to serve theocracy. They will do anything to get control, while the Dems will stop at nothing to hold onto it. In either camp, principle is nothing but a quaint, outdated notion.

Leftists with whom I regularly spar keep asking me how libertarians — small-L or large — ever hope to “take power.” For a long time, I really tried to take their question at face value and answer it. Then I realized that libertarians, whether in the party that bears their name or outside of it, are interested in something other than power for its own, brutal sake. We want to exert an influence as great as possible, but the direction in which we would steer this country is back toward principle.

Like a missionary from the last civilized land on earth, I try to explain this to statists both left and right, but they merely jabber at me about power, power, power. They are savages, and that is all they understand. We don’t dare abandon our enterprise to these people. They will tear the body politic limb from limb.

I am being too kind to today’s GOP to describe it as savage. It is no longer even human. It is, indeed, a B-movie monster. It may have honestly attempted, at one time, to fight the Blob, but it has long since been devoured and digested. I deeply fear that its bright, young, libertarian-ish stars will be unable to save it.

They still have to genuflect to lunatics. Perhaps to avoid being torn limb-from-limb himself, Rand Paul accompanied his assertion that the gay marriage issue should be decided by the states with a joke so blatantly in bad taste that even professional homophobe Tony Perkins claimed he’d gone over the line. “The president recently weighed in on marriage,” Paul told a gathering of Iowa’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, “and you know he said he views were evolving on marriage. Call me cynical, but I wasn’t sure his views on marriage could get any gayer.” Though Perkins, head of the notoriously anti-gay Family Research Council, said “this is not something to laugh about, to poke fun of other people about,” Paul’s joke drew plenty of yuks from the crowd.

“He said the biblical golden rule caused him to be for gay marriage,” Paul went on to say about President Obama. “I’m like what version of the Bible is he reading?”

As a gay person of faith, I could have told the senator that Obama was reading from the same Bible I do. The same one I thought the people at that conference read from, because I know of no other.

The atmosphere in the Republican Party has gotten so sulfurous that rhetoric like this is represented to us as fresh air.But I find it next to impossible to vote for a politician who says such things. Nor do I believe I can stand to remain in a party that requires every successful candidate to say them.

I am being too kind to today’s GOP to describe it as savage. It is no longer even human.

I’m glad that Senator Paul doesn’t want to throw me in jail for loving someone whose genitalia don’t meet with his approval. Perhaps it is overemotional on my part, but I simply don’t want to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in sweaty rooms packed with people who think like the “base” he still feels he needs to appease. My unease is based not on some childish fear that I might catch a disease, but on a sense that the whole party is headed over a cliff with the rest of the country.

Libertarianism offers an alternative that does something better than win the latest round in the tournament of big-government power. “Together,” writes Max Borders in The Freeman, “whatever our moralistic stripes, we are simultaneously creating a new order while rendering the old order obsolete. And now we’re aided by technology. This is not a libertarian ideology, but a libertarian reality carved out by people who simply refuse to be controlled by peers who purport to be superiors.”

That’s right — it’s what I really cared about all along. Perhaps the only difference I can make is by being different. We’re oddballs, and it may be inevitable that the savages won’t understand us. But every day new converts are joining us — if for no other reason than disappointment with the two major parties. Principle is roaring back.

We may need to opt out of the game. To “go Galt” on the system. The major-party minions may not like us, but we have probably already become too numerous not to count. The time may be coming when — dare I say it? — we may no longer be so odd.

Wherever I go, I will do good. That choice is mine, and as long as I insist on exercising it, I retain at least that much power. I refuse to accept savagery as the new normal. I will not be gobbled by the Blob.

About this AuthorLori Heine is a freelance journalist and playwright from Goldwater country. Her work is most often seen in the LGBT Christian magazines Whosoever and The Epistle.

Is the GOP Terminally Stupid?

On October 8 I received an email from Representative Luke Messer, a Republican representing the 6th District of Indiana. Attached was a “constituent survey” that Rep. Messer wanted me to fill out and email back to his office. As the reader can perhaps guess, the survey sought my views on the government shutdown.

To the best of my recollection I have never been in the state of Indiana, much less the 6th Congressional district. I did fly over the state once, I think. In any case I can’t conceive why Rep. Messer would want the opinion of this New Englander on the government shutdown. The survey itself was framed in classic push-polling style, an attempt to draw from me the answers that Rep. Messer and his allies so want to receive from the public.

The Tea Partiers just don’t seem to understand that the country as a whole is not to the right of Rick Perry.

For the fun of it I did fill out and send back the survey. But the whole business only reinforced the impression that has been growing in my mind — that the GOP is incredibly and perhaps terminally stupid.

This impression was further reinforced by an AP dispatch from Washington dated October 12 and titled “During Shutdown, Congressional Pay Strikes a Nerve.” Quite a few Republican friends of the shutdown saw no problem about collecting their pay while it was going on. They gave no thought to donating their salaries or setting them aside for the duration. I quote from the dispatch:

When Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., was asked whether he’d continue to collect his paycheck during the government shutdown, he offered a defiant response: “Dang straight.”

Days later, a penitent Terry changed course, telling his hometown paper, the Omaha World-Herald, that he was “ashamed” of his comments and would have his salary withheld until furloughed government workers got paid again.

And Rep. Terry was hardly alone. The AP went on to quote several other Republican members moaning, “I need my paycheck,” until constituent anger forced them to backtrack. “[I put my] needs above others in crisis. I’m ashamed of my comments” said one.

These are the people who craft our laws. So devoid of common sense are they that they could not see the political incorrectness and moral turpitude of their words and actions. This is the GOP the Tea Party has given us. Apparently, the complete proletarianization of our politics is being realized — not, as one might have expected, by the Democrat Party, but by the GOP. The party of Wall Street and the country clubs has been taken over (or almost so) by petit bourgeois Babbitts.

Consider the Tea Party-driven strategy behind the government shutdown. It began as an attempt to defund Obamacare. When this provoked indifference or hostility among the majority of the electorate, the GOP sought to extract concessions in other areas of spending and entitlements. This looked like extortion to many observers, and polling showed that the public agreed. Rather than fold a losing hand, the Republicans upped the ante by threatening not to raise the debt ceiling, a much more chilling prospect for business leaders as well as average voters. The Republicans gave the Democrats one opening after another to demagogue the situation, and Obama and his minions proceeded to do so. As a result the Republican Party, both in Congress and out, has dropped to new lows in public approval. Over 40% of the Tea Party currently disapproves of the GOP, according to the latest Gallup poll.

The actual dangers threatened by the Republicans’ stand have been overstated by the media as well as the Democrats. The government shutdown has done very little harm to the nation as a whole, although depriving federal workers of pay is hardly fair and will, economists say, lead to a slowing of economic growth if the shutdown is prolonged. But one way or another, the government is eventually going to reopen, and the effects of the shutdown will pass.

The GOP threat not to increase the debt ceiling is a more serious matter, though not for the reasons Obama and Co. have put forward. Republicans in Congress have pointed out quite correctly that money coming into the Treasury every month exceeds the amount needed to pay the interest on the national debt. Despite Secretary of the Treasury Lew’s prediction that October 17 would bring financial Armageddon, there is no prospect of serious trouble before about November 1. Moreover, the US has actually defaulted on its debt at least twice in the past (once in 1814 when the British came close to making us a colony again, and then in 1979 when a fight over a balanced budget amendment led to a brief delay in the Treasury’s ability to redeem about $120 million in maturing T-bills) without the world coming to an end.

Yet the environment today is quite different from that of 1814, when we were not the linchpin of the world economy, or even 1979, before the era of globalization. As so often in economic affairs, it’s the psychology that matters. Loss of confidence in the US as the world’s rock of financial stability would almost certainly lead to panic in world markets. A prolonged crisis would likely cause the dollar to fall from its perch as the world’s reserve currency, and the effects of that would be felt in every American business and household. A global 2008 for which no bailout could be organized might follow. The result could be a years- or decades-long depression in the US and much of the world.

The scenario outlined above may or may not reflect the exact conditions a default would produce. But do we really want to find out? Certainly the vast majority of Americans are not willing to gamble their livelihoods on Republican assurances that a default would be no big deal.

And therein lies the absurdity of the GOP position. Senator Cruz’s crusade against Obamacare, which touched off the crisis, has morphed into a game of chicken threatening the stability of the world economy. This is a path few Americans want to tread. Recall that over 40% of Tea Party members¤tly disapprove of the GOP.

Within the last few days the Republicans have tried to say that they provoked the shutdown and debt ceiling fight in order to force the Obama administration to negotiate over spending cuts and entitlement reform. Had they actually started out with that line, they might have attained the moral and political high ground. But too late did they realize that this was the only possible way to justify shutting down the government and threatening to default on the national debt. Everyone knows how and why this contretemps actually began, and few are buying the new Republican line. Obama and the Democrats are winning the argument despite the weakness of their case.

Quite a few Republican friends of the shutdown saw no problem about collecting their pay while it was going on.

This Republican performance represents the quintessence of political stupidity. The Republicans have bungled a potentially winning hand into a losing one. They have inflicted enormous political damage on themselves for 2014. Whereas six months ago it seemed certain they would reclaim a majority in the Senate, that prospect now seems very dim. While they will almost certainly not lose control of the House, their majority may well shrink, with districts gerrymandered to provide small Republican majorities tipping Democratic. 2014 is beginning to look like 1998 all over again — but worse.

Ideologically the party has been split asunder, with the establishment wing further alienated from the far right faction. This makes its presidential prospects even more tenuous. If Ted Cruz is the nominee in 2016, establishment Republicans will stay home or vote for Hillary. If the candidate of the establishment, that is, Jeb Bush, runs and wins the nomination, many Tea Partiers will go rogue by not voting or perhaps even taking the third party route. The Tea Party mantra, on the morrow of Hillary’s landslide, will be that the GOP candidate was another Romney, i.e., not conservative enough. The Tea Partiers just don’t seem to understand that the country as a whole is not to the right of Rick Perry. Maybe they will get a nominee to their liking in 2020. Then, after he or she is crushed in that election, perhaps reason will prevail, and stupidity recede. Perhaps.

More than any other single person, Ted Cruz is responsible for the present fix the Republicans are in. He won his Senate seat by taking on the Republican establishment in Texas. But that establishment is too far right for most of the rest of the country. Cruz, who definitely wants to be president, has gained new prominence, not by reaching out to the center but by pandering to his Tea Party supporters. This may or may not be a good idea for someone seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2016 or 2020, but from a national perspective it amounts to political suicide.

The GOP, whose symbol is the elephant, faces, like the real animal, the danger of extinction. California, once a purple state, is now definitely blue. Florida, once a red state, is purple trending toward blue. Texas is still a red state, but demographic trends indicate that its future is purple and perhaps even blue. If and when Texas goes, the Republican Party will be finished nationally. Cruz, the Cuban-Canadian-American who was last seen hobnobbing with Sarah Palin on the National Mall, is doing nothing to prevent the GOP’s decline — indeed, he is accelerating it. By choosing the path of political stupidity he is leading the Republican Party to destruction.

The elephant, reputedly a highly intelligent animal, does not have the ability to save itself from extinction. The GOP is headed that way purely because it has become too stupid to recognize political realities.

¤

About this AuthorJon Harrison, a former Liberty contributing editor (2008–2014), is a freelance writer and editor.

The Steel Curtain: The Pauls’ Attack on the Libertarian Party

The rise of Ron Paul and Rand Paul has brought great attention to such libertarian ideas as auditing the Fed and the need for an antiwar foreign policy. But because Ron Paul’s 2008 and 2012 presidential bids were GOP primary attempts, their net effect was to bring libertarianism into the GOP fold. The phenomenon was confirmed by Rand Paul's Senate victory as a GOP candidate, and by the fact that many Americans now associate libertarian ideals with the Tea Party, with which the Pauls themselves are associated, and think of the Tea Party as a Republican group.

Things were simpler when the GOP was for conservatives and the Libertarian Party was for libertarians. If, now, the GOP steals a large number of libertarians away from the LP, the LP will be doomed. Worse, Ron Paul's efforts have made mainstream America think of libertarianism as a right-wing political philosophy, more extremely to the right than conservatism. This is a tendency that Murray Rothbard, for one, would certainly have deplored. Rothbard fiercely criticized Ayn Rand's idea that "the businessman is America's most persecuted minority," asserting instead that many businessmen were statist hacks who benefited from corporate welfare. Yes, Rothbard might have felt differently during his paleolibertarian phase, but liberty has always been an ideal that paralleled leftist positions on certain social issues: drugs, immigration, gay rights, limits on police authority, and others. The danger now is that this parallel will be forgotten. The GOP will simply consume the LP, and true libertarians will have no political home.

Conservatives will always control the American Right because they vastly outnumber libertarians. If, then, libertarianism is considered a rightwing movement, it will eventually dissolve into nothingness. I fear that a steel curtain is going to be built, cutting libertarians off from our socially liberal positions, and fencing libertarianism in on the side of the conservatives. The Libertarian Party's national leadership has never been particularly clever or smart. It has often been obsessed with ideological purity at the expense of practicality and the possibility of winning elections. I doubt the leadership will have what it takes to save the LP from the Pauls’ implicit attack. To paraphrase Caesar, "Et tu, Paule?"

Things were simpler when the GOP was for conservatives and the Libertarian Party was for libertarians. If, now, the GOP steals a large number of libertarians away from the LP, the LP will be doomed. Worse, Ron Paul

About this Author

Russell Hasan is an attorney, author, and WordPress developer. He lives and works in the northeastern United States. He is the author of many books, all of which are available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions. When he is not working or writing, he is usually at a Starbucks drinking coffee or watching the New York Yankees on TV.

The Debates: An Autopsy

In the last version of this column, promises were made that the presidential debates would be noticed at some time in the future. These promises will be fulfilled.

Indeed, the fulfillment is already on its way: the debates were noticed in my very last sentence. So there. If I were running for public office, I could now inform you that the issue has been addressed, and it istime to move on. The American people are no longer interested in debates. They are interested in jobs.

So that is what I came to talk to you about today. Word Watch has a ten-point program to grow the economy.

Point One: Reduce the size of government.
Point Two: Reduce the size of government.
Point Three: Reduce the size of government.
Point Four . . . .

How’s that? If Word Watch were running for public office, that is what Word Watch would say.

But Word Watch is not running for office, so it will take the politically unprecedented step of fulfilling its promise. It will dissect the presidential and vice presidential debates.

The debates were chiefly significant for showing that Obama wasn’t the great speaker that people had always been told he was, and that maybe they had thought he was — while hitting the channel changer as soon as he reached the third sentence on his teleprompter. The debates also showed that Romney wasn’t a particularly bad speaker or a particularly bad person. As Michael Barone commented on October 27, they even demonstrated that Romney was more articulate than Obama.

To borrow a Randian way of looking at things, both candidates showed themselves curiously selfless. They weren’t interested enough in their own ideas even to represent them clearly.

I’m not putting Romney’s skills too high; as you know, this column has never considered it hard to beat Obama at the word game. After all, even Joe the Plumber did it. Compared to old-time politicians, Obama is basically nothing. He doesn’t know any more words than they did, and his grammar isn’t any better. His range of allusions is much more limited than theirs (they could quote Shakespeare and the Bible, while he appears to live in a world without any books at all); and he doesn’t know any good stories. He is as stiff as a high school principal who has attended Toastmasters on two separate and distinct Thursday evenings, and his self-importance is untiring. It doesn’t take much to overtake Obama in the oratory department.

Nevertheless, Romney did it. Don’t ask me to cite examples of his verbal brilliance; there weren’t any. But given the competition, they weren’t needed. When, in the second and third presidential debates, Obama “revived,” “woke up,” or “agreed to participate” — however you want to put it — he did even more to show what he is: snarky, snippy, evasive, demagogic, unwarrantably superior, bored or angry with everyone except his slavish adorers.

Both candidates spoke in ways that reveal their refusal to think about words in any except the most brutally instrumental manner — by which I mean considering words only as tools for turning out the vote. Beyond that goal, there was no attempt to enlighten or even to entertain, no attempt to show who one is or what, exactly, one thinks. In that sense, to borrow a Randian way of looking at things, both candidates showed themselves curiously selfless. They weren’t interested enough in their own ideas even to represent them clearly.

For instance, neither of them had any suspicion that “we need to grow the economy” or “I have a plan to grow the economy” might be an empty substitute for some real meaning. They swathed their vast, vague plans in a grossly inappropriate image of the economy as a natural object like a radish or a squash, some little object that you can grow. No reflective person uses language like that; only lazy minds choose the default setting, assuming that other lazy minds will relate to whatever clichés happen to waft their way.

Obama, of course, prides himself on his ability to communicate with the rubes. So he mentioned folks and workin’ people as often as he could, and he recited such phrases as “educating our workers” and “retraining our workers.” “Goodness,” said Jed Leland, responding to Citizen Kane’s campaign speeches about the downtrodden working people, “you talk as if you owned them.” If Obama knew the impression his words really create, he wouldn’t use them. But he doesn’t know it. He doesn’t even know that. And his self-knowledge is even feebler than his knowledge of the world. Again, it is the hollow man who lusts for power.

Of course, the candidates’ words were hardly news. They were so familiar that Charles Krauthammer characterized the last debate as the “national soporific,” the national “Ambien.” He’s a doctor, and he ought to know. I would say the same thing about the other debates, too, including the vice presidential one. That was interesting if you enjoy sitting in a bar and listening while an ancient blowhard recycles all his familiar comments about himself, the workin’ people, and the greatness of Harry S. Truman. The only thing that interested me about Biden’s uncouth performance was his pretended embodiment of the “blue-collar America” I grew up with. Some working man — the guy was a senator for 36years! But he does a great imitation of the sneering, ass-scratching, proud-to-be-ignorant loudmouth who makes life miserable for the other guys on the assembly line. This was a type that was never very popular among real working people, and its popularity with the Democratic Party elite, none of whom ever worked a day in their lives, shows you something bad about American political culture.

So much for the nauseating debates. Their salient feature was the cynicism they manifested, and aroused. Everyone who talked about them focused solely on their (for want of a lower word) rhetorical effects, having completely discounted the idea that anything of substance might actually emerge. The talk was always about how Obama will deflect criticism or how favorably Romney will be perceived, never for so much as ten seconds about any thoughts that either candidate might convey. After the last debate, all the conservatives who had insisted that Romney could succeed only if he went for Obama’s throat, especially about Libya, went on television to praise his statesmanlike restraint. They thought it had a positive impact on the audience.

Maybe they were right. But they magnified the already overwhelming cynicism that surrounded these events. The commentators all (rightly) assumed that the debates were a publicity stunt, and were apparently content with that. Dick Morris, holding forth on the “O’Reilly Show,” admitted to squirming as he watched one of the affairs, but his conclusion was: “The important thing in this debate was that women did not think he [Romney] was a warmonger. . . . It was a skillful debate on Romney’s part.” That may be true — but only because neither candidate was expected to provide as much real instruction as you get from your senile uncle, discussing his adventures as a young man, delivering auto parts in and around Cincinnati.

Biden does a great imitation of the sneering, ass-scratching, proud-to-be-ignorant loudmouth who makes life miserable for the other guys on the assembly line.

There’s a certain comfort in discovering that it wasn’t just the politicos who refused to take the debates seriously. As far as I could tell, nobody did. Since the debates weren’t serious, that’s a good thing. What I regret, even more than the lack of intellectual seriousness, is the lack of words — real words, interesting words, memorable words, words that could actually engage a normal person’s mind, rather than prompting that person to speculate about the impression they would make on someone of abnormally low intelligence.

It was not always thus. I’ve been reading Robert Douthat Meade’s old biography of Judah P. Benjamin, the Confederate statesman. Meade was a competent writer, and Benjamin was a colorful character, so the book is always fun. But in the present context, what’s remarkable is how interesting words used to be, even when they emerged without a hint of preparation or intention to wow the mentally deficient. I’ll share one sample with you.

When Benjamin was a US senator from Louisiana, he got into an angry debate with Jefferson Davis, then a senator from Mississippi, over the details of a military appropriation. It was an impromptu quarrel that began when Davis, in a bad mood, answered an inquiry from Benjamin in a flippant way. This exchange followed:

Benjamin: It is very easy for the Senator from Mississippi to give a sneering reply to what was certainly a very respectful inquiry.

Davis: I consider it is an attempt to misrepresent a very plain remark.

Benjamin: The Senator is mistaken, and has no right to state any such thing. His manner is not agreeable at all.

Davis: If the Senator happens to find it disagreeable, I hope he will keep it to himself.

Benjamin: When directed to me, I will not keep it to myself; I will repel it instanter.

Davis: You have got it, sir.

Benjamin: That is enough, sir.

If you’re like me, you care nothing about the subject of this dispute, but you enjoy the language. You even want to know what happened next.

So here it is: Benjamin sent Davis a letter challenging him to a duel — a gesture at once more serious and more interesting than any of the silly grimaces, chats with friendly folks, and public visits to fast-food joints that we got from this year’s political antagonists. And Davis responded in an interesting way: he tore up Benjamin’s challenge, telling the messenger, “I will make this all right at once. I have been wholly wrong.” He publicly apologized, and Benjamin handsomely accepted his apology. Three years later, Davis appointed Benjamin to his cabinet, and he became the second most important personality in the Confederate government.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating a revival of the Confederacy. I am advocating a revival of the English language.

About this Author

Stephen Cox is editor of Liberty, and a professor of literature at the University of California San Diego. His recent books include The Big House: Image and Reality of the American Prison and American Christianity: The Continuing Revolution. Newly published is Culture and Liberty, a selection of works by Isabel Paterson.

Talking to an Empty Chair

I keep hearing some people say that Clint Eastwood’s hilarious skit at the National Republican Convention was in poor taste. I am reminded of Marshall McLuhan’s famous quip that "good taste is the last refuge of the witless."

Indeed, I found it comical watching media insiders, even conservative ones, agonizing over Clint Eastwood's "disrespect" to President Obama as he mimed him telling Mitt Romney to perform an anatomically impossible act.

This is disrespect? To the president who by proxy or surrogate has accused Mitt Romney of schoolyard bullying, murder, lying, felony, dog-whistle racism, and income tax evasion, and who ran a video that showed Paul Ryan pitching granny into a ravine? When did we get so finicky and reverential about the president, particularly this president, who was tutored in the political graces in the corrupt down-and-dirty precincts of Chicago?

The insider campaign wonks who are expert in the art of manipulation claimed that Clint interrupted the touching emotional sweep of the painstakingly choreographed narrative leading up to Mitt Romney's acceptance speech. Mika Brzezinsky, co-anchor of "Morning Joe," said that Clint's shtick was "absolutely disgusting." And even Ann Romney claimed she "didn't know it was coming."

Such sensitive souls!

Governor Scott Walker said that Eastwood's speech made him “cringe,” and Roger Ebert added that he found Eastwood’s performance “sad.” But as the cameras scanned the convention floor I didn’t see anyone cringing or sad. What I saw was the uproarious laughter of an audience previously about to die from an assault of cloying sentimentality. The majority rose to their feet in cheering approbation, and many were laughing so hard they seemed on the verge of crying, if not rolling in the aisles. I have a hunch that many of these embarrassed and shocked TV newsmen were secretly laughing up their collective sleeves as well, and will wake up in the middle of the night and burst out with geysers of uncontrollable laughter.

There was a subtext to Eastwood’s funny, roguish skit: it covered some pretty deplorable behavior of President Obama and his dysfunctional administration; it was, in fact, a serious bill of indictment. But what Clint Eastwood really brought to the proceeding was some much-needed irreverence in a too carefully scripted presentation. It's called comic relief.

About this Author

William Fankboner is the author of Marshall McLuhan: A Hypertext Field Guide, and The Triumph of Political Correctness. His articles have appeared in FrontPage Magazine, Alternative Right, and The Magic City Morning Star. He is a former computer programmer whose utility software has been reviewed and published by Macmillan Publishing QUE Division.

Another Surprise Endorsement

In a recent Reflection, I noted that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), son of libertarian Ron Paul (R-TX), caused something of a stir among “movement libertarians” (a phrase rather ironic — sort of like “organized cats” or “conformist rebels”) when he endorsed Mitt Romney, aka the Rich White Mormon.

Even more fascinating is the recent announcement by Wayne Allyn Root that he is resigning from the Libertarian Party’s National Committee to switch to Romney and Ryan &‐ albeit with some understandable reservations: “I don’t deny that Romney and Ryan aren’t libertarians, but Romney is a pro-business capitalist and Obama is a Marxist-socialist.”

He added, “The economy has been trashed. This is about my kids’ future, it’s about my businesses. There is no hope for America if Obama is re-elected.”

Root was the Libertarian Party’s VP nominee in 2008, running with Bob Barr. (Barr has signaled that he, too, will support Romney.)

The move has aroused a lot of criticism. One blogger called Root a turncoat who sold out after a rich Mormon helped him pay off campaign debts. Another said that Root is just angling to take a run at replacing Harry Reid (D-NV, and ironically yet another Rich White Mormon). Root seems to confirm this when he says that he “plan[s] to join Tea Party U.S. Senators like Rand Paul, Jim DeMint, Marco Rubio and Mike Lee in the near future, representing the great state of Nevada.”

What’s the old (and probably apocryphal) Chinese curse? “May you live in interesting times.”

‐

About this Author

Gary Jason is an academic philosopher and a senior editor of Liberty. His recent books, Disturbing Thoughts: Unorthodox Writings on Timely Issues and Philosophic Thoughts: Essays on Logic and Philosophy are both available through Amazon.

Stop the Convention

No, I’ve had it; and I think the nation has had it too. This business of national political conventions has got to stop.

As my colleague Drew Ferguson recentlydemonstrated, the Libertarian Party convention is still of human interest. It is, after all, a place where ideas matter, and personalities too — the more colorful, the better. But as for the Republicans and the Democrats . . . sorry, we’ve reached the end.

As a reporter for this journal, I attended what I believe to have been the last real nominating convention of a major party, the Republican National Convention of 1996 (Liberty, November 1996, pp. 18–25). The event was almost entirely staged in advance, and the huckster room — the place where people sell pictures and trinkets and “literature” and elephants (or donkeys) — was by far the most interesting thing about it. But there was a moment when Pat Buchanan, the idol of the right-wingers, appeared unauthorized on the convention floor, and almost took the assembly away with him. From the point of view of political interest, that almost made the convention legitimate.

But nothing like that could have been expected of the Romney and Obama séances. In place of real drama, or real decision-making, what we witnessed — and very, very few Americans could be cajoled into witnessing it — was two dopey, incompetent infomercials, filled with obvious lies and the kind of product demonstrations that would make any seller of male restoration medications blush.

The trappings of old-fashioned, drama-filled conventions were retained — the platform report, the roll call, the nominating speeches — all useless, all precrafted by nameless political hacks, or discredited former office-holders (Bill Clinton, of all people, masquerading as the sage elder statesman). And all a gigantic bore.

I swear to God, after Obama’s speech at his convention, the folks on CNN actually said, “Let’s get some reaction from the delegates on the floor.” As if the nation needed to hear the “reactions” of the loser religious fanatics who populate these mobs, people regarded with sovereign contempt by the leaders of their own parties.

“Excuse me, Ms. Four Hundred Pounder, esteemed delegate from East Overshoe, Ohio, ‘employed’ as a ‘union representative’ in a public ‘school,’ and currently decorated from toe to top with goofy political buttons, can you tell us what you thought of the president’s speech?”

What’s the probability that Ms. Pounder will say, “I thought that guy was the biggest tool that ever afflicted our country”?

A synonym for “boring” is “predictable.” Now, what can be more predictable than 40 hours of astute political commentary by Democratic office-holders and other parasites about the virtues of the preordained Democratic nominee? (Substitute “Republican” in the appropriate places, and you’ll get the same effect.) Answer: speeches by the spouses of the nominees, extolling (what a surprise) their hubbies’ qualifications to be president.

In ages past, the very idea of such a speech would have been regarded as the kiss of death for any political candidate. A man is on trial for stealing from the collection plate (which is what all politicians do), and his best witness turns out to be . . . his wife? Good God! And the speeches of Mrs. Romney and Mrs. Obama, as bad as they were, were regarded by some professional political commentators as the best ones at the conventions.

There are so many awful moments to remember . . . I’ll single out just one: President Obama, apparently having nothing better to do, entering the convention hall to listen to himself being extolled by former President Clinton — who is, according to David Gergen, “the most effective speaker in America.“ Clinton, by the way, is universally known to be Obama’s bitter enemy, because of Clinton’s desire to have his (own) wife elected, so the whole affair was an exercise in what everyone knew to be in-yo-face hypocrisy. What a picture! — rivaled only by that of Mr. Obama, rushing out to hug Mr. Clinton at the end of the latter’s address.

What we witnessed was two dopey, incompetent infomercials, filled with obvious lies and the kind of product demonstrations that would make any seller of male restoration medications blush

But listen: this business of relatives is completely out of hand. First there was the Kennedy family (creeps). Then the Bush family (dolts). Now the Clinton family (real, dedicated weirdos). But to return . . . This notion of a person listening to his own nomination speech, then going onstage to hug the speaker, would have filled any previous candidate with horror. It just wasn’t done. By anybody. It wasn’t even thought of. Why? Because there was (often) a reality, and (sometimes) a decorous pretense, that real business was being conducted at a national convention, that real people were deciding whether to nominate this real person or that real person for a real and important office, and that before the nomination was made, it behooved that person to show respect, and stay away.

For whatever reason, Barack Obama couldn’t stand to do that. He had to take the stage in his own infomercial. Following which there was a roll-call “vote” of the “delegates.” What do you suppose would have happened if a group of those common people, so much extolled throughout the two parties’ conventions, had arisen to cast a vote for somebody besides the preordained candidate? There would have been a lynching, at the least. Yet these are supposed to be deliberative assemblies.

I say, away with them all. They are nothing but attempts at cheap publicity, and like all such attempts, they get cheaper and cheaper. From now on, hold your silly primaries, cast your votes in your corrupt state party committees, tabulate the results by computer, and nominate your person. Stop the masquerade. It isn’t funny anymore.

About this Author

Stephen Cox is editor of Liberty, and a professor of literature at the University of California San Diego. His recent books include The Big House: Image and Reality of the American Prison and American Christianity: The Continuing Revolution. Newly published is Culture and Liberty, a selection of works by Isabel Paterson.

Irreconcilable Differences

Like their counterparts on the statist Left, social conservatives use words not to clarify thought but to stir emotion.

In America, the contemporary political Right essentially consists of two factions. Ordinarily one is called social conservative and the other libertarian, though a more accurate way of distinguishing them would be to describe the former as big-government conservative and the latter as small-government conservative.

The only thing that brings the two together — into the marriage of convenience that unites the Right today — is a shared opposition to the statist Left. The Obama administration has kept them together as perhaps nothing else could. It may be all that prevents them from getting their long-overdue divorce. Once Romney is elected, if that indeed happens, all the counseling in the world won’t be enough to save this marriage.

As far back as the ’80s, President Reagan seemed to understand that this was strictly a shotgun wedding. Those who opposed Communist expansionism had to stick together to win the Cold War. There must always be a grand cause — an archenemy to defeat. At the moment, Barack Obama fits the bill.

I, very frankly, am getting tired of being told that I must vote for whichever unprincipled empty suit the Republican Party has chosen to carry its baton. Mitt Romney is particularly hollow. He seems willing to say anything, do anything, pander to anybody, betray anybody to get elected. As the aim is clearly only to wrest power away from the Democrats, this seems to be acceptable to the GOP, which has surrendered all but the flimsiest pretense that it has any principles whatever.

This probably suits big-government conservatives just fine. They are all about power, power, and more power, totally in the thrall of the delusion that if they just get enough of it, they can hang onto it forever. Their small-government counterparts, on the other hand, may just want to think again. How can it further our principles to trust in a party that has none?

We are being told that the Obama administration is a threat to America of apocalyptic proportions. But it hasn’t stopped so-called social conservatives from playing chicken with the rest of us on their favorite issues. To gain the blessing of the GOP establishment, candidate Romney must, for example, voice support for the Federal Marriage Amendment: a poison pill if there ever was one. Its passage would violate at least three, and possibly four, existing constitutional amendments. It would, essentially, make the Constitution contradict itself, thereby weakening it and accelerating its eventual destruction.

So we already know that Mitt Romney cannot be taken seriously. Even before getting the chance to take the oath of office for the presidency, he has as much as admitted that he would damage it. One cannot “preserve, protect, and defend” something that one has indicated a willingness to help destroy.

Romney’s claim to champion small government is also dubious, considering the fact that while he was governor of Massachusetts, he raised taxes every year. Oh, he called them other things — “tax-fees,” the closing of loopholes on an internet sales tax, new laws permitting local governments to hike business property taxes, and a new tax penalty soaking both individuals and small businesses. He claims to be an economic conservative, but that claim can attain credibility only if big-government devotees on the political Right manage to drain the term of meaning in the way they have drained “social conservative.” Defining what any sort of a conservative he is seems a lot like determining what “is” is: an interesting parlor game.

I suppose part of my problem with “social conservatives” is their apparent unwillingness to think through what they mean by using that term to describe themselves. I frequently ask friends who call themselves that to explain it to me. The hostility this evokes is puzzling. It appears that they’re not sure what they mean, and they don’t like having their confusion exposed.

I’m perfectly willing to explain, to anyone who asks, why I call myself a libertarian, or a small-government conservative. I see little sense in using a term — repeatedly — to describe myself, but becoming resentful when asked to elaborate. Social conservatives seem to claim that name not as a descriptor but as a dog-whistle. Like their counterparts on the statist Left, they use words not to clarify thought but to stir emotion.

“Either you are giving your opinion of yourself,” I tell them, “or you are saying something about your philosophy of government. I don’t care about your opinion of yourself . . . that’s your concern, not mine. I may or may not share it, and it’s rather narcissistic of you to assume it interests me as much as it does you.”

If, on the other hand, they are saying something about their philosophy of government — that force should be used, by the state, to make other people comply with their views about how people’s lives ought to be lived — then that is of tremendous concern to me. But I would prefer they drop the self-congratulatory veneer and simply call themselves what they are: advocates of big government. For if they do believe that government should do such things, the task is impossible unless government is big and intrusive. Other than serving as a smokescreen, the term “social conservative” accomplishes nothing, because it reveals nothing. If language does not reveal, then it serves no meaningful purpose.

It is dishonest for the Republican Party to go on pretending that big-government conservatives and small-government conservatives belong in the same political party. Their aims are so fundamentally at odds that they cancel each other out. It would be impossible for both to succeed, because a victory for either would inevitably be a defeat for the other. No organization can simultaneously move in opposite directions. As long as it tries to appease both factions, in the misguided notion that this gives it greater power, it will remain what it has become: an incoherent mass of acrimony.

But there's another bad thing to mention. The GOP's lack of clear purpose leads its opposition into further intellectual laziness and moral decay. Instead of the parties' improving each other and, by extension, the country — the very reason the two-party system is supposed to exist — everyone gets dragged down. It’s a race to the bottom all the way.

Libertarians and true small-government conservatives are telling the truth about the cause of our national demise and what must be done about it. Big-government conservatives — whatever they want to call themselves — are lying about it. That many of them believe that lie can be chiefly attributed to their lack of willingness to examine whether it’s true. But when one side in a conflict tells the truth and the other lies, there should indeed be a decisive winner and loser.

Truth is not such a relative matter after all. “Social conservatives” fervently claim to believe that. Too bad their behavior so often says something altogether different.

It is dishonest for the Republican Party to go on pretending that big-government conservatives and small-government conservatives belong in the same political party. Their aims are so fundamentally at odds that they cancel each other out. It would be impossible for both to succeed, because a victory for either would inevitably be a defeat for the other. No organization can simultaneously move in opposite directions. As long as it tries to appease both factions, in the misguided notion that this gives it greater power, it will remain what it has become: an incoherent mass of acrimony.

About this AuthorLori Heine is a freelance journalist and playwright from Goldwater country. Her work is most often seen in the LGBT Christian magazines Whosoever and The Epistle.

This is a magnificent book. It is riveting, hard to put down, informative. I experienced much of the Ron Paul phenomenon myself, up close and personal, yet I learned a great deal from Doherty’s explication. In another life, he must have been a safari guide to the deepest jungles, or an inspired travel guide to foreign lands, or a gifted sociologist. He takes us on a trip through the libertarian movement as brought to us by Dr. Paul as no one else has been able to do.

If you are a Ron Paul fan, or are interested in his foray into Republican and Libertarian politics, or even hate the man and want to be informed about him, this is the book to get. Its main drawback is that it was released on May 15, which means that Doherty must have finished writing it early in the year (he covers the Iowa caucus in its last few pages); but so much has happened since then, and without this author to put all these recent occurrences together for us, it just isn’t the same. This means that if Ron Paul becomes the next president of the US and appoints me czar of anything, I shall order Doherty to write a sequel to this important book of his.

Our author takes us on a historical tour of Ron Pauliana from his early days, to his medical career, to his beginnings in politics, his struggles as the Dr. No congressman, and his three campaigns for the presidency — one for the Libertarian Party, and two for the Republicans. But this book is far more than a biography. One of its many strengths is Doherty’s incisive knowledge of the libertarian movement in all its esoterica.

Others are his numerous vignettes of the people who have given of themselves, lost jobs and alienated friends and family members, in their support of Paul. Doherty also offers candid assessments of Ron Paul himself; we get not only the palpable love that Doherty feels for Paul, but also some of Paul's warts; e.g., he refuses to take lessons from professional speakers, he keeps his religious faith to himself, and he almost absolutely refuses to tailor his message to his audience (of course without violating his principles — what kind of a politician is that?) — things I didn’t fully appreciate even though I, too, am something of an intimate of Paul.

Doherty had me at the edge of my seat, practically panting with glee, as he described the dramatic Giuliani-Paul dustup about 9/11.

Doherty is not a professional economist. Yet his insights into the gold standard, budgets, the deficit, the debt, the fallacies of Keynesianism, the Austrian business cycle theory, the Fed, inflation, the Ponzi scheme of Social Security, the difficulties with socialized medicine, and much more — are clear and true. He is a journalist, not a libertarian theorist, and he is also insightful in his treatment of the niceties of legalizing drugs, the distinction between crony and real capitalism, the strengths and weaknesses of various “movement” organizations and leaders, "voluntaryism," anarcho-capitalism, and a host of other often complicated issues.

The dramatic highlight for me in this book was our author’s depiction of the Giuliani-Paul dustup about 9/11. I witnessed this myself, firsthand. And I read what was said about it, in the aftermath. Yet Doherty had me at the edge of my seat, practically panting with glee, as he once again described this dramatic event. Doherty is nothing if not a magnificent storyteller, and this gift of his pervades the book.

This is a strange review for me to write, for at roughly the same time that his book about Paul was released, so was mine. Doherty and I agreed to review each others’ books, and this is my contribution to the agreement. Although Doherty and I share a love for Ron Paul, our books are very different. I don’t interview anyone; Doherty's book is chock-full of interviews. In contrast to Doherty's, mine shares no personal experiences with Paul and Paulians. Mine is not at all historical. I do not give any tour of the libertarian movement, as he does. Instead, my book is in part an attempt to garner publicity for Paul. I wrote articles that later became chapters in the book about whom he might pick for Vice President and whom for Supreme Court, not so much because I thought there was a clear and present need for such speculations, but more as an attempt to promote his quest for the presidency. In the book, I feature groups such as Jews for Ron Paul, to combat charges that he was anti-Semitic, anti-Israel. I offer a few “Open Letters to Ron Paul,” where I have the temerity to offer him advice on, among other things, how best to deal with interviewers who simply will not allow him to speak.

Another part of my book features my sometimes, I admit it, pretty vicious attacks on people who “done wrong” to Ron Paul. These chapters are not so much aimed at liberals or conservatives, although I do take on a few of them. I can (sort of) forgive them their trespasses. What do they know about anything important after all? No, my ire was aroused to the boiling point by unwarranted criticisms emanating from libertarians, several with impeccable credentials in this philosophy. They, it seems to me, should have known better.

Let me close this review with two very minor criticisms of the Doherty book. For one thing, he (along with practically everyone else) characterizes the war of 1861 in the US as a “Civil War.” But ’twas not a civil war. That term pertains to the case in which one party wishes to take over the entire country at the expense of its opponent. The wars in Spain in 1936 and in Russia in 1917 were true civil wars. While the North in 1861 did indeed wish to rule the entire nation, the South did not. It only wished to secede. So a more accurate characterization would be, the War to Prevent Southern Secession, or the War Between the States, or the War of Northern Aggression.

Second, Doherty (p. 254) claims that what enraged Ayn Rand about the publication in the Freeman of Milton Friedman and George Stigler’s article, “Roofs or Ceilings” was that Friedman “was willing to grant the good intentions of his intellectual adversaries.” No, she was angry at Friedman and Stigler because of “a paragraph on page 10, which seems to suggest the authors agree with the goal of equalizing income.” Rand (very properly in my own view) called them “the two reds” (Snow, 2012). In the view of Skousen, 1998: “Ayn Rand labeled the pamphlet ‘collectivist propaganda’ and ‘the most pernicious thing ever issued by an avowedly conservative organization’ because the economists favored lifting rent controls on practical, humanitarian grounds, not in defense of ‘the inalienable right of landlords and property owners.’” Miss Rand objected to Friedman-Stigler on both of the grounds just stated, and I concur with her on each.

But these are minor blemishes in an otherwise magnificent book. I loved reading it, and so will you, if you have even the slightest interest in Ron Paul and liberty.

Libertarian economist Walter Block really, really likes Ron Paul, and thinks Paul ought to be (and thought when he wrote this book that he would be) the next president of the United States. As the title indicates, Ron Paul for President in 2012: Yes to Ron Paul and Liberty is a book of express, and strongly worded, advocacy. Block grants at one point that, well, libertarians can maintain their cred as true friends of liberty merely by not stabbing Paul in the back. But his general tone sells the message that anything other than pure adoration and belief in Paul’s eventual victory qualifies as such stabbing, and he writes that he sees support for Paul as “a sort of litmus test for libertarianism.” Anyone who does not share and express Block’s own thoughts and feelings regarding Ron Paul with precisely the same, or nearly the same, strength and commitment seems to be, in Block’s view, an objective enemy of libertarianism, and generally “despicable” (a favorite Block word for people or articles he thinks are anti-Paul).

Block’s new book is a collection of his articles and blog posts, most of which appeared at the website LewRockwell.com, and were written mostly over the course of Paul’s 2011–12 campaign. As Block writes in the book’s introduction, “Each and every last one of these chapters is an attempt . . . to expand and expound upon his [Paul's] views, to publicize them, to promote his candidacy, to defend it against attacks from within and without the libertarian movement.”

Block is a professor of economics at Loyola University in New Orleans by vocation, and by avocation the “Jewish mother” of what he sometimes calls the Austro-libertarian movement, the hardcore pushers of a Rothbardian plumbline of Austrian economics and anarchistic libertarianism. Here, this Jewish mother’s mission is to tell libertarians, and the world, that they need to push for Paul. Although Paul is not 100% by Block’s own standards — even Block admits the non-anarchist Congressman Paul is only a 97, and further admits to disagreeing with Paul on immigration and abortion — Block finds Paul’s rise in public prominence in his 2008 and 2012 campaigns the greatest thing that’s happened to the libertarian cause in, well, ever. Block believes that “the Texas congressman has acquainted more people with libertarianism, and converted them to this philosophy, then all of the other [libertarian thought leaders] put together.”

Block is well placed to judge these matters regarding the libertarian movement. He’s a grandmaster of modern libertarianism himself, fighting in the trenches of academic and popular writings on Austrian and libertarian issues for over four decades, since he was converted to Austrian economics at Murray Rothbard’s feet. He’s the author of the libertarian classic Defending the Undefendable, which rigorously argues for the legitimacy of such professions as the blackmailer, ticket scalper, slumlord, scab, and employer of child labor, professions which disgust many but which Block points out aggress against no one and provide real economic value and should not be interfered with by the state. That book’s purpose is not to be shocking, per se, but to be rigorously intelligent in identifying the legal and moral meanings of the modern libertarian project, and Block performs the purpose brilliantly. As F.A. Hayek, not nearly as hardcore as Block himself, said of the book: “Some may find it too strong a medicine, but it will still do them good even if they hate it. A real understanding of economics demands that one disabuses oneself of many dear prejudices and illusions. Popular fallacies in economics frequently express themselves in unfounded prejudices against other occupations, and in showing the falsity of these stereotypes Block is doing a real service, although he will not make himself more popular with the majority."

Block finds Paul’s rise in public prominence in his 2008 and 2012 campaigns the greatest thing that’s happened to the libertarian cause in, well, ever.

Block tries to write, here as in all his popular writings, with a light hand. His version of lightness, though, often manifests itself as a very New Yorker-ish (not the magazine — a stereotypical New Yorker) heavy sarcasm, with bursts of manic silliness. But his point is serious, even when made with bludgeoning irony. The book contains defenses and explanation of Paul’s stances on discrimination law, environmental protection, the dangers of the Federal Reserve, and ending the drug war, among other issues. Block advises Paul, from afar, about how to conduct himself during debates, while wisely allowing that, given Paul’s tremendous success, he’s obviously already doing most things right: “It is unlikely that [his success] is in spite of his presentation style.” Block also indulges in some Paul fannish fun, such as skylarking about possible Supreme Court nominees or vice presidential picks for the congressman.

Since this book collects pretty much everything Block has written in the past four years that mentions Paul at all, it is a bit repetitive, and it sometimes drifts a bit into more general libertarian controversies, such as Block’s daring defense of accepting money and jobs from the government. Block believes that as long as you stand against statist policies, “the more money you take from the coffers of the state, the better libertarian you are.”

The book also contains Block debating or attacking other libertarians for falling short of Paulist standards; instances, he believes, are Randy Barnett’s pro-Iraq War stance, and Wendy McElroy’s disdain for any major-party political leader for the libertarian cause. Block often provides line-by-line eviscerations of other people’s writings that he found mistaken or insufficiently respectful to Paul, whether from libertarian or nonlibertarian sources. (Block regards one of my Reason colleagues expressing on TV the opinion that there was no way Paul would win the presidency — and with a look on her face that he found objectionable, to boot — as a firable offence. He regards an organization that would not do such firing as unworthy of the libertarian label or libertarian support. Reason, of course,did not fire her.)

Block may be read by some as too hero-worshipping of Paul, and unrealistically optimistic about his chances. (Block, for example, seems to think the probability of Paul’s victory can be calculated merely by assuming that every single GOP candidate has the exact same odds of winning.) But Block is objective enough to admit that despite his admittedly great success as a proselytizer for the cause, Paul is “not a leading theoretician, not a leading economist . . . not a leading intellectual” of the movement. So what is he? I think Block would agree with my assessment, as author of my own book about Paul and someone who has followed his career with interest and support since 1988, that Paul is a staunch student and fan of Mises and Rothbard who has learned and can transmit their lessons well, who found himself in the position — ironically through a major-party run for president — of selling radically anti-political libertarian ideas with greater efficiency and success than anyone else has managed for a very long while. Block is correct in thinking that Paul has been uniquely successful at his task, and most interestingly by finding a huge mass of normal Americans who never thought of themselves as libertarians before, or as anything specifically political at all.

Understanding what Paul did and said since 2007 ought to be of great interest to libertarians or students of libertarianism, or just students of American politics, and Block gathers a useful collection of information and arguments about the Paul movement as it happened, touching on many of the controversies that surrounded Paul, both within and without libertarianism. If one is a Paul fan seeking a grab-bag of commentary and explanations that is unabashedly pro-Paul — something difficult to find in the modern media environment — then he or she will at least have fun with this book, and likely learn a lot about some of the more complicated issues Block addresses, such as strict property-right libertarian environmentalism, and how to figure out, amid the maddening empirical complications of modern foreign policy issues, who is and who is not an initial aggressor, as opposed to simply a retaliator.

Readers not already 100% sold on Paul are likely to feel Block’s suspicion and even contempt radiating at them. But 10, 20, or 30 years from now, when people look back on what the Paul movement may have meant for American libertarianism, this book will be a valuable document of the excitement and manic energy that Paul’s presence inspired in many a libertarian, old and new.

About this Author

Walter Block is Harold E. Wirth Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics, College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, and senior fellow at the Mises Institute. He earned his PhD in economics at Columbia University in 1972. He has taught at Rutgers, SUNY Stony Brook, Baruch CUNY, Holy Cross, and the University of Central Arkansas. He is the author of over 400 articles in professional journals, two dozen books, and hundreds of op eds. He lectures widely on college campuses, delivers seminars around the world and appears regularly on television and radio shows. He has been a friend of Ron Paul’s since the 1970s.

Brian Doherty is a senior editor at Reason magazine and author of, among others, the books Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement and Ron Paul's Revolution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired.

Ron Paul and the Future

Four years ago, when Rep. Ron Paul suspended his campaign for the Republican Party’s nomination for president, he would not endorse the party’s nominee, was not invited to the party’s convention, and held a counter-convention of his own. By all appearances, he’s not going to do that this year.

At Antiwar.com, Justin Raimondo urged Paul to run as an independent, “because a third party candidacy will leave a legacy, a lasting monument to your campaign and the movement it created.” I can’t see a lasting monument in it, or the sense. I note that Paul’s forces are continuing to push in the caucus states for convention delegates, which confirms that Paul expects to attend the convention as a loyal Republican.

In 2008, I wrote in Liberty that Paul ought to endorse the party’s nominee, John McCain. Paul wouldn’t have to campaign for McCain, I said, and he could remind people how he was different from McCain, but to preserve his influence in the party he’d have to endorse McCain as preferable to Obama. Well, he didn’t. Paul endorsed Constitution Party nominee Chuck Baldwin, a pastor and radio talk show host whom few Americans had heard of, and who received 0.15% of the general election vote.

Paul’s forces are continuing to push in the caucus states for convention delegates, which confirms that Paul expects to attend the convention as a loyal Republican.

This year Paul turns 77. He is not running to keep his seat in Congress. His career as an elected politician is at an end. But since January 2011 he has had a son, Rand Paul, in the Senate. There is talk of the junior senator from Kentucky being Romney’s vice-presidential choice and more talk of him running for president in four years, or eight. Either way, for Ron Paul, having a 49-year-old son in the Senate changes the calculus about party loyalty and his movement.

Again, I say: endorse the nominee. It doesn’t mean you agree with everything the nominee says. It means that in a field of two, you prefer your team’s candidate to the other one’s. It means there is a Republican label on you and your supporters. And that is important, especially regarding them.

Is an endorsement a betrayal?

What was the point of the Paul campaign? To put Ron Paul in the White House? That was never possible. In public, Paul had to pretend that it was, because those are the American rules, and his supporters have been pretending it even harder. But it was a fairy tale. Ron Paul’s purpose has been to advance the cause of liberty, sound money, and a non-imperial foreign policy. He could do this even if he fought and lost, depending on how he did it. He was introducing new ideas (or old ones) into political discourse, creating a new faction that aimed to redirect the mainstream of one of the two great national parties.

That is not a defeatist notion. It may be a task with a lasting monument, though it is too early to say.

A political leader changes the thought of a party by persuading people to embrace new ideas. To do that, he needs the media’s attention, and in politics, equal attention is not given an outsider. It has to be earned by such things as polls, the size and behavior of crowds, money raised and, ultimately, by electoral results.

Endorse the nominee. It doesn’t mean you agree with everything the nominee says. It means that in a field of two, you prefer your team’s candidate to the other one’s.

Paul achieved none of these things in 1988 as the nominee of the Libertarian Party. He was nobody, and he went home with 0.47% of the vote. But in 2008, in the Republican Party’s primary campaigns, he did unexpectedly well, measured by straw polls, crowd behavior, and campaign donations. Unfortunately, the media pegged his support as narrow-but-deep (they were right) and mostly ignored him. He took 5.56% of the Republican vote — one vote in 20.

This year they still slighted him, though less than before. And he received 10.86% — one vote in almost nine. His support was still narrow-but-deep, but wider in almost every state. He was not the top votegetter in any of them, but he came close in Maine and garnered more than 20% of Republican support in six caucus states: Maine, 36%, North Dakota, 28%, Minnesota, 27%, Washington, 25%, Alaska, 24%, and Iowa, 21% — and in three primary states: Vermont, 25%, Rhode Island, 24% and New Hampshire, 23% (not counting Virginia, 40%, where his only opponent was Romney).

Paul’s support is not typical for Republican politicians. He is from south Texas, but seems to do best in states on the Canadian border. Most of his best states are Democrat “blue” rather than Republican “red.” He was the oldest candidate in the race, but exit polls showed in state after state that he had the youngest supporters. In New Hampshire, a Fox News exit poll showed Paul winning 46% of Republican voters 18 to 29 years of age.

Enthusiasm among the young is a special political asset, but with a liability: the zeal of believers can go over the top. Some believe that Ron Paul is the only man who can save America, and that anyone who opposes him is evil. They don’t see themselves as joining a party; they aim to take it over. In the unfamiliar turf of parliamentary procedure, they are quick to cry foul and sometimes are right. At the moment, their strategy in the caucus states is to outstay the Romney supporters and snatch the national delegates away from them.

And that makes for nastiness.

This is from a Politico story by James Hohmann, May 14:

Those close to [Ron Paul] say he’s become worried about a series of chaotic state GOP conventions in recent weeks that threaten to undermine the long-term viability of the movement he’s spent decades building. In the past few days alone, several incidents cast the campaign in an unfavorable light: Mitt Romney’s son Josh was booed off the stage by Paul backers in Arizona on Saturday, and Romney surrogates Tim Pawlenty and Gov. Mary Fallin received similarly rude treatment in Oklahoma.

Booing is the public stuff. I know a political operative who crossed the Paul forces and received death threats — so many, he said, that he turned off his phone for two weeks.

How they vote in November might change if Paul made an endorsement; and anyway, how they think is the more important thing in the long run. If a large number of the young ones went into one political party and stayed there, they might change that party — and that could be the lasting monument.

All this is something for Ron Paul to think about as he ponders whether to endorse, what to do with his 100-plus delegates, and what to say if the party gives him a chance to address the national convention.

About this Author

Bruce Ramsey is a retired newspaperman who lives in Seattle. He is author of Unsanctioned Voice, a biography of journalist Garet Garrett.